and his candle in the dark

Category Archives: Words

It’s so easy to slip into obsessing about the faults of others, or my own faults, eager to find a solution there, but that place never heals. Blame is a circle and you have to move beyond it to find true healing. Every time you desperately seek a solution to your problem by placing blame, catch yourself, even if it takes one thousand times, until you have the discipline of a new way. Forgive yourself and others if it is peace you are looking for. Acknowledge your lack of power in these big mysteries that only life knows how to handle. Embrace the moment in-front of you to distract yourself from your mind and you will see that the distraction was your mind. As you let go of the need to place blame you will feel free and see that blame is a pointless trap that only exists because we use it. As you embrace the mysterious peace of the moment, you’ll see it always knows better and you’ll learn to trust it with other things too. Here’s a poem by Rumi that I love :

“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing
and rightdoing there is a field.
I’ll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass
the world is too full to talk about.”

Why do I need them to be any different from the way they are? They’re simply stuck and not searching as deeply, they live closer to the surface and it’s what they want. I feel like i deserve to search in my own way, at my own pace, and they are doing that too. we’re not so different. I’m so quick to separate myself, brought up to compete, compare and envy, that I become so detached from life. I know life wants me to love it, and everyone in it, inseparable from it, but I find it so hard not to feel separate at times. The is a river inside me, running between my heart and my programming that’s slowly running dry as I fall into life’s open arms. I’ve only ever known to compare and compete and judge and feel jealous or guilty. I carry this deep shame that society deems me not good enough. I forget that society is more than the lifeless structure i once made up as a way to cope, I forget that at its core, we are society, beautiful people with beating hearts, lost in the traffic of our pain.

How do we trust in life when a shadow is cast over everything that was going fine? How do we trust life when we lose things that mean a lot to us?

Each blow to the heart leaves its mark. Do not lose faith. Let each blow soften you to the true nature of life and soon you will see again that everything is in in its right place. Blessed is the man who has suffered and found life.

Today was one of those days i’ll probably never remember, but one of many that stand as roots inside me. Hard days lived in faith are the building blocks for a strong will and a sure heart. Discipline means many days like this, and as Rilke says, “The purpose of life is to be defeated by greater and greater things.” Each act of faith through a hard moment, becomes a footstep towards who you were born to be.

We have to risk losing ourself in order to find ourself. The sentence stuck to me as I was reading over some old words i’d written, because lost is exactly how I feel. More and more lost each day and slowly becoming more okay with it. At times I cling to any old security but more and more I find myself, help myself up, and remind myself that it’s okay to be lost, that in fact, it is good to be lost. It’s taking time to make sense. All of these deep changes come with a wave of confusion. Something peaceful walks with me through defying the very mind I’ve spent all these years living in, in favour of the real me that i’ve only ever seen in glimpses, that i’ve only ever been in glimpses.

Hunched up against the wall again, a stack of three pillows between the wall and the bed and my bent back, I’m seeing all the things in my room under new light. I’ve really built a safe magical place for myself to grow. Rocks line the walls and the floor, hold overused candles and form small walls surrounding groups shells. One rock stands at the end of a row of old books, keeping them upright and close together and each book is sacred to me and has served as a friend in helping me trust life itself over people’s unsatisfactory ideas about it. I hold words close and find comfort in their promise and their quiet advice, I keep going back to this poem by William Alexander Percy; ‘I have a need of silence and of stars, Too much is said too loudly. I am dazed. The silken sound of whirled infinity, Is lost in voices shouting to be heard.’

I had a beautiful moment earlier. I decided to eat my toast and drink my tea out on the roof in a little patch of shadow. It’s been awhile since I’ve sat on the roof. The first thing I thought about was how often I wake up feeling separated from all of my surroundings, how I have to find myself again each morning in an almost ritualistic way. And so I sat, drinking my tea, slowly waking up to life around me. So many different birds flying back and forth, busily preparing for something or in search of some breakfast to share. As i became still I noticed one bird flying away really fast and then returning with a stick in its mouth to add to it’s nest, before speeding away again to fetch another stick. I watched another bird struggling to stand on the loose telephone wire, flapping and shaking and flipping over for quite some time before eventually giving up and moving to sturdier ground. There is always so much here, weather I notice it or not, flies and bee’s and trees and also the ocean all relentlessly carry on. It calms me down to spend some quiet time outside and remember how connected everything is.